The World Economic Forum’s ranking of competitiveness released this week confirms what many of us feared: Latin America is losing ground in the global economy and is doing very little about it.

The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014, probably the most comprehensive study on countries’ ability to compete internationally, measures, among other things, each nations’ institutions, infrastructure, business climate, education, technological readiness and innovation. [...]

Xavier Sala-i-Martin, a well-known economist at Columbia University and a leading author of the WEF Global Competitiveness Report, told me that “in Argentina and Venezuela, the problem is not just excessive state control of the economy, but bad state control of the economy.”

“Government decisions are not taken based on economic efficiency, but on political favoritism, and on punishment of those who don’t support the government,” he said. [...]